Having an effective sales strategy in place is critical to the success of any business. While organizations can often debate as to what is the right strategy, there are four key areas that can be developed to build a strong foundation for any strategy to be built on top of.

1. Clearly define how you help your customers (Value Proposition)

It is critical to clearly define the benefit that you bring to your customers. How do you help them to decrease costs and increase revenue? This is your value proposition and all messaging, whether collateral, presentation, or scripts, should be built around or on top of this.

The better you can communicate this and the more quantifiable you can get, the more effective your strategy will be. Going as far as building tools to use during a sales process to help estimate the value in terms of return on investment can be very effective and could be the difference at the end of the day.

2. Identify how you differ from you competition (Differentiation)

It is critical to fully understand and embrace how you differ from your competition. This could either be centered around your strengths, it could be focused on the competition’s weaknesses, or a mix of both.

Every person in the sales organization should know this differentiation inside and out. We often just focus on learning our own products and features. But for consistent results, it is just as important to know how you differ and every sales person must be able to clearly articulate this to prospects.

3. Determine the customers and individuals that benefit most from your products and services (Target Market)

It is likely that your products and services fit better with some prospects versus others. This fit will be determined by understanding those that stand to benefit most from doing business with you. This group becomes your sweet spot of ideal prospects and your target market. Once this is determined, this group should be the focus of your time and effort from a sales strategy standpoint.

Examples of characteristics that will shape this group are company size, industry, location, etc. Time is limited so you need to direct attention and energy to where you can get the biggest bang for your buck. Focusing on the ideal prospect will improve the probability of an effective sales strategy.

4. Map out the best way to connect with your prospects (Communication Model)

A key component to an effective sales strategy is how to effectively communicate with prospects to find new business. This will be greatly impacted by the product being sold and the type of customer being sold to, but will ideally be a mix of cold calling, email marketing, networking, social media, door-to-door, referrals, repeat business, etc. The answer and best fit will always be different, but there is certainty in the fact that an effective sales strategy will utilize multiple forms of communication in order to effectively get a prospect’s attention.

Those are four key areas where attention and thoroughness can be placed to build a solid foundation and sales strategy. Once you clearly know the value you offer, how you differ, who you need to focus on, and how you are going to communicate, a strong sales strategy of sales resources, sales processes, sales training, and sales material can all be built and put in place to drive positive results.

Launch Pad Solutions provides sales consulting which helps businesses to get their business to take off.